Clear day sightlines (or, 6 mile hexes are large)

From a recent wander up a local high point, it was a clear day and I got a photo with a number of readily identifiable local landmarks. It serves as a nice illustration of how far one might see tall things and how long sight lines could be on a clear day.

The two grim things for DMs running hex-crawls - you can fit a hell of a lot of stuff into a single six mile hex and you can see the tall things in a lot of those hexes on a clear day.

Our start point is the star - the start of a walk down a trail which is in the city limits. The four easily identifiable things we can spot because of their tall bits are - the local train depot, the church in the graveyard, the smoke-stacks on the refinery and the control tower at the airport. Far beyond, I think that mountain is the next country over but that one is only 90% certain. The height of these things is the number in brackets.

The interesting thing here is we have a good lot of full grown trees for comparison - I figure most of those are ~60 ft trees, in proper fantasy game forests of a Europe-like place those could be twice as high in ideal old-growth conditions so site A and possibly B would be obscured in those conditions.

Assuming our hexes are 6-mile and I am standing at the edge of one at my start point, the center is between sites B and C. Then just in the slice along my sight line I have farm fields, a rail yard and a graveyard half the size of a city. (the local gag is 'half the population of Zurich and twice as much fun') and a colossal industrial site. If I was keying this hex, is it the giant graveyard or the giant refinery that is my point of interest?

If we were 3 mile hexes in stead then the first would be centered on site B - the graveyard. My next hex is centered on site C, a colossal industrial site. My next hex beyond that is site D, the airport. Both of these are interesting contemporary illustrations of 'one thing per hex' - you fill out the rest of both hexes with roads, flood-protection zones by the river, generic farmland. Both are nominally 'one thing' locations but they are also hugely complex locations you could stage all sorts of adventure in.

Think of any airport, that labyrinthine warren of rooms, choke-points, twisting paths, multi-levels non readily accessible, layers of machinery, out-buildings - perfect dungeon complex analogue. Think of any heavy industrial site which are often hazardous to the people who work there, never mind anyone fumbling about lost within them. These are great examples of 'one thing per hex' that is also hugely complex and contains a ton of adventure.

Even with 6 mile hexes all this was 'detectable' from the start point; a good high steep slope and a clear day gets you a lot of information about what is going on nearby. Site E would be five hexes away; in this case that is the border of the next country over.

Not an original insight but a case study to reinforce exactly how much can be crammed into a 6 mile hex and how many hexes you can see on a good day.